Sunday, July 23, 2006

Parasol

Despite the incorrectly written characters, 伊勢 or 伊勢囯 is a province in Japan. 戦国 or 戦国時代 is referring to Japan’s Warring State Period which is roughly from mid 15th to early 17th century. 戦国村 could either be a village or a compound from the Warring State Period.

For those who are not familiar with Japanese history or read the five characters on the parasol as Chinese, 伊勢戦国村 might mean something like “Iraqi/Iranian warring/conflicting village”.

The reason why it might mean either “Iraqi” or “Iranian” is because both terms were phonetically translated into Chinese and often abbreviated using just the first character. 伊拉克 is “Iraq” and 伊朗 for “Iran”.

Whoops! I am afraid my Japanese history is not so good. This should be correctly read:伊勢・安土桃山文化村Ise Azuchi Momoyama Bunka Mura

This 安土桃山 comes from 安土桃山時代 which is a different period of Japanese history from 戦国時代, so presumably they changed the name of the theme park for some reason having to do with historical accuracy.

By the way, a stylized 伊勢戦国村 something like the former "logo" of the park appears below, so you can compare the character forms on the parasol with those in the logo:http://machi.fukushi-net.com/episode/yajikita/08/13/sengoku.html

I don't think it's stylized. I think it's a mistake, written on a cheap umbrella to sell to people who can't read characters. A quick image search gives me the blog of a Japanese backpacker who found it in a shop window in South America ...

Alan:I looked into this and found that a Japanese 漢和辞典 lists this form (having 王 instead of 玉 inside 囗) as being a nonstandard variation (俗字) of 国.

An interesting discussion of this appears here:http://book.shinchosha.co.jp/shoushin/kanji_ichiran/kanji9810.html

Paraphrased, the author is saying that abbreviated forms of the character 國 containing either 王 or 玉 insice 囗 have been used since ancient times, and the 王 variation appears to have been the more common variant.

(Meaning-wise too, it seemed reasonable for a country, especially a kingdom, to be written using the character for king (王) inside an enclosure.)

In fact, even in China, the name of the country 太平天国 as it appeared on their coins used the 王 variant.

Prewar Japanese character lists also used the 王 variant for 國. The author is somewhat perplexed as to why the 玉 variant ended up being adopted as the standard abbreviated character on the 1949 list of Toyo Kanji.

The author speculates that perhaps the use of the 王 variant could be considered to be supportive of the king (emperor) and have been inappropriate for postwar Japan.

Similarly, in Mainland China, when proposing abbreviated forms of characters, they had intentionally avoided the 王 variant as being incompatible with Communist ideology.

The Taiping official seal used jade instead of king, though, so while it may have been a variant, I'm still not convinced. The park doesn't appear to have an email address, but there must be some way of contacting them to settle this.

Period theme parks like that are pretty common in Japan, and at least some of them do sell souvenir umbrellas. My wife had one from Something Edo Mura years ago. But it had nicely-written characters on it. The kanji in the picture look like they were written by Japanese 5th graders. I can't believe that any theme park would sell souvenirs with such miserable-looking kanji. I can't imagine any Japanese person buying one. I think this is probably a copy of a real umbrella, produced and sold outside Japan.

I find it very interesting that the author felt it necessary to give an explanation of the character 囯. This tells me that many Chinese people may not be familiar with the character. It certainly seems to be an unusual character.

Apparently, 囯 was introduced during Taiping Rebellion. It was originally accepted as the replacement for 國 in 《汉字简化方案修订草案》(Chinese Characters Simplification Programme, revised draft) in 1955. However, the programme's committee felt that having a king in the country wouldn't be appropriate and added that dot. Afterall, the People's Republic of China had just overthrown the Qing Empire. "Reintroducing" 王 into country just doesn't make sense. "Freedom Fries" anyone? ;)

Apparently 囯 is an alternate character for 國 used by Hong Xiuquan, leader of the Taiping Rebellion.

quote:"In its first year, the Heavenly Kingdom minted coins that were 23 mm to 26 mm in diameter, weighing around 4.1 g. The inscription 太平天囯 ("The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace") was on the front and 聖寶 ("Holy Treasure") on the back. Unlike the canonical character 國 for "country" used at that time, the Kingdom chose alternative variant form 囯 instead, which is a king inside a boundary. It somewhat resembles the simplified character 国 that was created by the PRC government."